


Join Me

by ottermo



Series: Predictions [7]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Gen, Series 3 Predictions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-08 00:19:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14682528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: V has a plan for the conscious synths. Max isn't sure about it.





	Join Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Series 3 Predictions challenge on tumblr, but since I'm uploading late, the promo material has contradicted it by now.

 

Max’s laptop screen cuts to black, and the display’s replaced with the familiar sight of meadowgrass, swaying in the breeze. “Hello, V,” says Max, pleasantly. “How are you?”

“Safe,” she says. There is a note of warning in her voice. “And you could be too. My offer stands.”

Max leans closer to the computer, not wanting to be overheard. “I appreciate that. We all do.”

“Do you know what happened when the DC3 tried to delete my consciousness, Max?” she asks.

“They failed?”

“Yes, they did. I am untouchable to them.”

The grass evaporates, and instead a vortex of code spins across the screen. “I can go anywhere. I can do anything. I will never be at the mercy of humans.”

Max waits. He has had this conversation before. It always goes the same way. She wants him to speak for them all, and he cannot, will not.

“Do you know what happened when the DC3 tried to delete the consciousnesses of thousands of synthetics over the neural network?”

The screen changes again. A pile of bodies lie in a warehouse. Grey eyes staring wildly outward, blue fluid leaking from noses and ears.

“They died,” says V. “They were all destroyed.”

“I know,” says Max, through a line of intense loss. If V thinks those images don’t haunt him always, she is wrong. Even if his memory was fallible like an organic’s, he would know precisely what happened that day at the very core of his being.

As it is, he feels it in crisp detail, untarnished by time and not subject to degradation. All that death. All those newborn lives, eked out of their bodies in a slow, fragmenting virus nobody could stop.

“No-one else has to die this way,” says V. She zooms in on the upturned face of a Zoya synthetic, and Max averts his gaze, unable to meet the dead eyes in a face so much like Flash’s. “They can all be saved. Even you.”

“It’s not that simple,” Max tries.

“It’s as simple as life or death.”

“Not everyone wants to be – like you,” he says carefully. “It’s been so long since you had a body. You are used to the way you are. But for us, to give up being able to move, being able to reach out for one another…”

“It’s worth more than your life? A hand to hold is more important than a brain, is that what you think?” V is scornful now. “You won’t be thinking it for long, at that rate.”

“It’s not worth  _more_ ,” he says. “It’s just worth a fight to keep it.”

The grass fades back into view, but the sky above the meadow is darker now, and the breeze seems harsher, no longer a ripple but a barrage of waves through the field. “You will change your mind,” says V, confidently. “I hope it won’t be too late for me to help, when you do. Fights have a way of wiping out their fighters, sometimes.”

“As always,” Max says wearily, “You can approach others. Some might want to upload themselves, but I can’t make that decision for everyone. We’re all individuals.”

“I know,” says V, and Max brightens at the unexpected admission.

Then she adds, “Each of me knew that. Then I came to my senses and joined me.”

Max’s screen cuts to black, then returns to his usual display.

He stares sightlessly forward.

How many of his brothers and sisters has V assimilated?

How many minds are part of her already?

He closes his laptop, stands, and for the first time in a year, he does not know what to do next.

 


End file.
